House on barge off Peanut Island may soon have a home

This house, once a home in Palm Beach and once headed for the Palm Beach Maritime… (Mark Randall, Sun Sentinel )

April 6, 2013|By Ben Wolford, Sun Sentinel

RIVIERA BEACH — — In 1911, a Palm Beach pioneer lived in a pinewood cottage by the sea. One hundred years later, a golf course needed the land.

To escape demolition, the pioneer's descendants slipped his house onto a barge. They nudged it into the Intracoastal Waterway to safety.

Twenty months later, it floats in limbo. A home without a home.

"It's just been sitting there for God knows how long," said Mark Pollio of Blue Water Boat Rentals, who works the docks nearby. "Just waiting for it to rot and fall into the water."

Engineers insist it's not rotting. And the family says it is close to finding a plot of solid land.

But they have said this before. Each time money or politics blocked its path to the coast.

So, for almost two years, a little yellow house with steep-slanting eaves has been perched above open water, a curiosity for snorkelers and sailers. Tourists seek answers from the woman who tends a marina tiki bar. Why do you have a house sitting out there? She has few answers.

"You know how many people ask me that?" says Pollio.

The house is there because historic preservation is hard in Palm Beach County. From 1992 until earlier this year, Jane Day was the preservation consultant to the town of Palm Beach. She still runs her firm, Research Atlantica.

"I've had a career going back to the '80s, and I've seen it happen before," she said.

From Coconut Grove up to Peanut Island, the forces of development clash with the forces of nostalgia. Sometimes one side loses, and the relic comes down.

This time, the Palm Beach Country Club donated the demolition cost, $10,000, toward relocation instead. A local contractor donated the barge.

Pat Burdette, of Modern House and Building Movers, took it from there.

He dug holes beneath the waterfront cottage and shoved in steel beams. Hydraulics heaved it onto a dolly, and The Stambaugh Cottage at 851 N. Lake Way vacated its century-old address.

"Usually we know where it's going," Burdette said.

Recorded history starts late in Palm Beach County. Local historians think someone built the yellow house in 1903 in the "vernacular" style, which means it had no architect — just some ambition and a few thick beams of Dade County Pine.

Orrel Gleason Stambaugh brought his family from Oklahoma to South Florida in 1910, according to a report submitted to the city of Lake Worth when it was considering adopting the cottage (it didn't).

He set out to be a farmer, but Stambaugh became an engineer instead. With two mules, he built some of the first roads in West Palm Beach and the Royal Park Bridge. Historians know that by March 23, 1911, Stambaugh was living in the cottage.

His oldest son, Gleason, is Joette Stambaugh Keen's grandfather.

Keen says that even after nearly two years, she is still "emotionally vested" in what becomes of the house but is now "on the sidelines" of the discussions. She intends to sign the title over to the barge owner.

"A lot of people call it the little house that could," she said.

It would be expensive to restore Stambaugh Cottage. Aluminum siding conceals the original wood. And maintenance would require a longterm funding source. Preservation requires "deep pockets," Day said.

As the cottage embarked in 2011, Keen and others were trying to stash it by a Palm Beach schoolhouse, the first in South Florida, known as the Little Red Schoolhouse.

They considered Peanut Island, near the Coast Guard station where Keen's grandfather was a reservist in World War II. But county commissioners and museum operators on the island had a long-standing feud. The politics were "just too sticky," Keen said.

They looked to the South Florida fairgrounds and to the city of Lake Worth. No one was willing to pay.

Keen said the cottage's seafaring days could be over soon. A vacant lot may be available. She hopes.